More on the Quest for Vegan Convenince Foods

I am a lazy eater. I’m sure I have admitted this before, but I will announce it again. I eat an embarrassing amount of convenience foods and snacks. I have attempted a plant-based diet in the past but the lack of readily available vegan snack foods ultimately lead to my failure. Lucky for me 10 years later and a lot has changed! I’m trying out new vegan snack foods at a crazy pace, and thought I’d post about the various products I have tried and which I liked or didn’t. This post covers burgers, pizzas, and other hand foods (I am awful at coordinating a knife and fork together and if I can eat with my hands I will. J was taught to use cutlery properly – by English nuns, no less – and thinks me terribly uncouth. But I’ll never learn.)

Vegan BurgersBig Mountain Foods’ Santa Fe Cheesy Burger. I love Big Mountain Foods’ other vegan burger patty (The Original), but I thought this “cheesy” one was just ok. I am not a fan of walnuts in general, and especially when I encounter a semi-hard chunk mid-bite of my burger. It kind of wrecks the texture for me. The size and thickness was good, and it didn’t fall apart which is a bonus. As with many vegan patties, a brush with vegetable oil will keep it from being too dry. I didn’t taste any cheesiness though… so overall not bad but I’d rather eat their regular patty. These guys are local though which is really awesome!

The vegan Hippie Burger at the Silva Bay Restaurant (Gabriola, BC). This burger is pretty tasty, though with just ketchup it’s a bit dry. They don’t carry a vegan mayo so maybe next time I’ll bring my own haha. I’m assuming that by noting it is vegan that includes the pretzel bun… which honestly I’m not a big fan of. I like a regular soft white bun, but that’s just personal preference 🙂

Amy’s California Burger. This one is a good one, but another patty that contains walnuts which I’m not crazy about. Texture and taste are good, and it didn’t fall apart. I really liked that it was so mushroomy. Yum!

Yves Garden Vegetable Patties. This company makes a variety of different types of veggie burger and they have a range of different tastes. Funnily enough, my favourite vegan patty so far is the Yves Good Burger, but my least favourite has been this Garden Vegetable patty. I also have a package of faux chicken patties (unbreaded) that I have yet to test, but I am bit worried about them hahaha. The texture of this one was softer than the Amy’s or the Santa Fe Cheesy, but the taste was a bit too… sweet maybe? Can’t put my finger on it. Smelled good though!

Vegan Pizza

The ultimate in lazy/convenience foods, the frozen pizza! This Daiya roasted vegetable pizza is vegan AND gluten free and boasts a “new and improved” crust, which totally fell flat for me. I didn’t look to see if they had a non-GF version, but I definitely would have preferred it. I didn’t photograph the actual product but as you can imagine with frozen pizzas it looked nothing like the cover. For $10 I’m not sure this was worth it, but I’ll probably buy it again the next time I’m starving and unmotivated (which is often).

An alternative to the ready-made frozen pizza that requires only slightly more effort is to make a pizza at home from a ready-made crust. Daiya is the only vegan cheese option available to me here that I know of, and honestly I don’t actually like the stuff that much. It’s better than nothing but I eagerly await the day a better product comes onto the market. These mozzarella style shreds are good in small doses on top of a veggie heavy pizza, in my opinion. They do melt and stretch fairly well but the taste, probably from the tapioca starch, is off for me. This little pizza I made with pineapple, vegan pepperoni, mushrooms, onions and greens was very good – though it’s an acquired taste I think. I decided it wasn’t too bad but when I offered a bite to J he immediately spat it out on the ground hahaha.

More on the Daiya cheese front; Panago now offers it as an option for cheese if you are fortunate enough to be able to order pizza delivery (which I think is everyone except me). I get a light dose and it’s perfection. Plus it comes right to your house (or your desk, haha)!

Other Vegan Lazy Foods

Daiya also makes vegan cheddar cheese slices for grilled cheese. This one is going to take some getting used to for me… it’s not at all the same as those gross non-vegan cheese slices, it’s sweeter or tangier or something. And somehow grosser. I don’t think I would buy these again given the choice.

Eating Vegan and Lazy at Work In addition to having Panago bring me food to put in my face, I also venture away from my desk to seek out vegan goodies nearby. I have already gushed about the vegan tacos from Tacofino in Vancouver, but also absolutely delicious is their vegan burrito. Rice, black beans, guacamole, shredded lettuce/cabbage… ughhhh it’s so good. And fast. And you don’t even need cutlery! (See a theme in this post yet? Ha)

While working in the city I consume about a million of the items photographed above. Literally twice a day, every day that I work. I’m completely destroying my profit margins, but I digress. JJ Bean makes the BEST chai latte with soy milk I have encountered, and their double chocolate brownie vegan friendly cookie is the bomb.